It's the republicans who first instituted mass mailing as a campaign strategy. They also seem to be the ones who embraced the unregulated internet for campaign ads.

There was a man on the Daily Show a month or so ago who had written a book about society's information movement and how poltics related to it. I got the impression he was a Republican, but it still seemed quite true. The Dems have not yet learned to leverage various media in the capacity that the Republicans have, especially not in this last election.

I am Jack's information inference
March 7th, 2005

Democrats not able to leverage the media, are you nuts?The whole freaking media complex is on their side. The major news networks (Rather, Jennings, Brokah); Cable news: CNN, MSNBC; The major news papers : NY Times & LA Times; All your major college campuses are breeding ground for the liberal agenda; Radio America; Hollywood; MTV. Geez, I call that pretty well leveraged. It was a freakin joke that the dems couldn't take the election in 04. With all the money and support from the media and they couldn't unseat an unpopular president. Nope, perhaps the leftist, radical, liberal, socialist platform is starting to collapse under it's own weight.

Steve-O
March 7th, 2005

++All your major college campuses are breeding ground for the liberal agenda+++

No actually, you're average college freshmen is not pretty bright, being sheltered by mommy and daddy all their lives and then handed over to socialist professors who brainwash them on fearing/hating the "evil", "capatilist pig" empire America and brainwashing them into self-loathing to manipulate them. The ironic thing is that it is the "evil capitalist" empire that provides them with all the benifits and freedoms to get a "liberal" education in the first place.

Steve-O
March 7th, 2005

So there's a VAST LEFT WING CONSPIRACY.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaa

AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAAA

Funny, I thought that most universities (particularly state universities) were run by the good ol' boys networks (how else did GWB get into Yale with his grades?). How do all those evil socialist professors get their jobs?!

Hey, what happended to the check mark. You were the shit for a while with your check mark.

Steve-O
March 7th, 2005

It seems to me that there is a very strong anti-education sentiment in this country. That we don't need no stinkin' edumacation, we'll just roll up our sleeves and git the job done.

Well, there's a time and a place for that, and I respect the people who actually get things done when they get them done right. There certainly is something about a drive to succeed that can make some people decide that school is a waste of time and that their time would be better spent actually being productive. I don't see anything wrong with that.

What does annoy the crap out of me is dismissing true education as useless. I don't have much respect for the school system of this country, truthfully, but I believe in the ideal of establishing a common cultural background that places value on clear and critical thought. The inability of many people to see multiple solutions to problems and their unwillingness to adapt to new situations is going to be, and has been, a real problem for this country and the world as a whole.

Diseases don't just magically go away. It's educated people trying ways different from the established norms that came up with a better system that helped extend human lifespan and allows us all to be healthier than we would have been. It's educated people who find out how to improve crop yields to help feed the population that survives longer thanks to the medicine developed. It's educated people who solve problems of distribution systems to get the food to everyone.

It's *not* conservatives who insist on continuing doing things a certain way just because that's the way it's always been done who did any of the things I mentioned above. It's *not* people insisting that blacks and whites can't marry who improve tolerance and reduce violence. It's *not* people freaking out about a single boob on national television in the midst of an alchohol laden, implied sex-driven, spectacle of sanctioned violence who wrote the Constitution that our President has twice sworn to uphold.

I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I think they're both outdated and useless. I think neither one is capable of creating the solutions to problems that plague us today, nor of solutions to problems that will emerge in the future. They both piss me off. I'm completely done voting for members of either party.

Einstein may have been great for physics, but ecoonomics was not his fortay.

And as long as we are going to quote articles partial to our world views here are couple by Thomas Sowell:

"In all these very different societies around the world, the story of socialism has been a story of high hopes and bitter disappointments. Attempts to redistribute wealth repeatedly led to the redistribution of poverty.

Attempts to free ordinary people from oppression repeatedly led to what Mikhail Gorbachev frankly called "servility" to new despots."

its actually kind of a false dichotomy, socialism works very well when practiced by like minded people...it just doesn't scale well to 'everyone', because more people than otherwise just dont give a shit unless they have motivation.

the same thing applies to capitalism...except that capitalism *requires* a base of poor, underfunded and undereducated people to form its base on.

so, basically, socialism works very well for smaller societies but fails as it scales, whereas capitalism works surprisingly badly for smaller communities and societies but scales brilliantly, gradually pushing the group of 'pure capitalists' to the top and using everyone else as the poorer base.

...any deeper studies of capitalism though show that it will cease to work once the society can no longer grow its pool of resources.<g> and it *definitely* stops working once the poorer and underfunded group at the base decide they're sick of being there.

<shrug> like everything, both approaches have their place, and anyone trying to claim that any particular approach is always better than any other is doing nothing more than showing off their lack of understanding for all to see and admire :)

March 7th, 2005

Hah, Steve-O, you're quoting the same Thomas Sowell who's an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq invasion (to free ordinary Iraqis from oppression, as you say), to the extent he's furious about how journalists told us all about Abu Ghraib:http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3681

That's not your only contradiction: I didn't quote ol' Einstein at all. Just stated the fact of his age while writing some article, in response to someone else's quoting.

Couldn't care less about his beliefs, since I can form my own. So should you, rather than quote someone mindlessly.

As for Karl Marx, he was probably a jackass for all I know; I haven't read a paragraph of his. Dull writer.